AI for coding has just taken a major step forward: on July 9, 2026, OpenAI and Meta released new tools on the same day — ChatGPT Work and Muse Spark 1.1. We break down what these products are, how much they cost and why the market suddenly became crowded.
ChatGPT Work: OpenAI’s New AI Agent
OpenAI introduced ChatGPT Work — an AI agent that combines the familiar chatbot with the capabilities of the Codex coding tool. The goal of the product is to give office workers without programming skills access to powerful AI coding capabilities: creating documents, presentations and even entire websites directly through a regular chat.
The service runs on the company’s newest model — ChatGPT 5.6, which also debuted on July 9. At the same time, OpenAI released an updated ChatGPT desktop app and a new website-hosting feature directly through chat.
ChatGPT Work is a direct response to Anthropic’s Claude Cowork, an agent that since January 2026 has been able to independently plan and execute multi-step tasks without constant human intervention.
Muse Spark 1.1: Meta Enters the AI Coding Market
On the same day, Meta introduced Muse Spark 1.1 — according to the company’s Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang, it is the “most powerful model the company has for agentic tasks and coding” to date.
The first version of Muse Spark appeared back in April 2026, but only a small group of selected partners had access to it through a private API. The July 9 release is now a full public launch.
Price as Meta’s Main Weapon
Wang directly described Muse Spark’s pricing as “aggressive and attractive” compared with Anthropic’s and OpenAI’s offerings. Every new API account receives $20 in free credits at launch, and after that the price is $1.25 per million input tokens and $4.25 per million output tokens.
For comparison: this is very close to the price of the cheapest ChatGPT 5.6 version — Luna, which costs $1 per million input tokens and $6 per million output tokens. The difference is minimal, which means buyers of AI coding tools now have a truly comparable price choice between two different companies for the first time.
Why This Matters: The AI Coding Market Has Become Crowded
Until now, the AI coding assistant market was effectively dominated by two players — Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex, with GitHub Copilot as the third notable option. Now Meta is joining them with its own offering — and this is the company’s first major step away from a purely open strategy with Llama models toward selling access to its own paid models.
However, Meta emphasizes that it is not fully abandoning the open approach: according to Wang, the company is developing a separate open version of Muse Spark, although no exact release timeline has been announced yet.
For businesses and developers choosing a tool for work, this means one thing: competition is now putting pressure on prices across the entire AI coding segment, and the choice between providers has become truly comparable for the first time.
In Brief: The Key Points
AI for coding is now represented by at least four serious players — and here are the key facts:
- July 9, 2026 — OpenAI and Meta simultaneously released new AI coding tools
- ChatGPT Work — an agent for office tasks based on ChatGPT 5.6, a competitor to Claude Cowork
- Muse Spark 1.1 — Meta’s most powerful agentic model, publicly released after months of closed testing
- Pricing: Muse Spark — $1.25/$4.25 per million tokens, almost on the level of the cheapest ChatGPT 5.6 version (Luna, $1/$6)
- The AI code-generation market has expanded from two main players to four
FAQ
What is ChatGPT Work? A new AI agent from OpenAI that combines a chatbot with the Codex coding tool, allowing users to create documents, presentations and websites without programming skills.
What is Meta Muse Spark 1.1? Meta’s most powerful model for agentic tasks and coding, introduced on July 9, 2026 in a public release after several months of closed testing.
How much does Muse Spark 1.1 cost? $1.25 per million input tokens and $4.25 per million output tokens, with $20 in free credits for new accounts.
How is ChatGPT Work different from Claude Cowork? Both are agents for automating multi-step work tasks without programming skills. ChatGPT Work runs on ChatGPT 5.6, while Claude Cowork runs on Anthropic models and has been available since January 2026.
Will Muse Spark become a free and open model? Meta says it is developing a separate open version of Muse Spark, but has not yet named an exact release timeline.
The article was prepared by the TechVisor team — practical IT media for people.
